I had an interesting discussion with two of my German friends earlier in the week. It was about the subject of race. In the US, whenever we will out forms, it will ask for our race/ethnicity and we check white, Asian, etc. However, the Germans said that they get really offended with these forms. The forms in Germany ask nothing about your race and they are an immigrant country as well. They believe that, even if it’s just for data, you shouldn’t be asked about your personal ethnicity or race. When one of the girls was filling out her housing form for the UK, she simply left the ‘race’ column empty. I thought this was very interesting because we would never have given it a second thought. I would’ve checked off Asian happily and moved on with the form. This is one of the reasons I love studying abroad. I love talking to people from other country, you learn so much by just having a random conversation with them.
Another thing that I found interesting was how much we took everything for granted in the US. I know I’ve mentioned this before with the water pressure and such, but this time when I was doing laundry, all the dryers didn’t have heat, so we ended up wasting our money and having to hang our clothes in our room. All the Americans were complaining about it because they weren’t used to hanging their clothes. I must admit, I was pretty upset myself, especially since I only had about 8 hangers and pretty much washed my whole closet. Then, at night, the heaters stopped working as well as the hot water for showers. Once again, all the Americans in our program complained. The services they have here can’t compare to the amazing staff they have in America and yet, we complain about everything we have back home. I know at my cousin’s university in China, they don’t even have a heating system and she lives in a really cold area. They basically deal with it, have a good time, and move on with life - nothing to complain about. America really spoils us.
Moving on to the great parts of the week:
“Remember, remember, the fifth of November…”
After my awful test and lab, we went to Lewes for Guy Fawkes Day. Let me just tell you, this is one of my favorite holidays. I love how England and probably the rest of the world is so relaxed on stuff like…throwing huge explosive things at people, making a massive bonfire, marching through crowds with fired torches.It was crazy, pictures/videos cannot do this justice. These are not my pictures because I did not take my camera with me due to the fact that I thought it was too dangerous haha.
Lewes holds an annual bonfire event to celebrate the failure of Guy Fawkes, it is a smalltown with a 16,000 population. Someone told me during the holiday, it can get up to 70,000! The SIS group and I got there just in time for the parade around 9pm. I have never seen anything like this in my life. It started with everyone was holding crosses that were on fire, and then this guy held one of those things to hang people (was on fire as well), and most people marched around with lit up torches and they were throwing random explosives at the crowd. It was actually really scary, in an exciting way! Now why can’t America have this? Oh, cause we sue everyone.
After the three parades, we headed to the best part of the night. There were 4 bonfires throughout the town; we went to the free one. It was a pile of wood about 2-3 stories high, that’s even higher than our houses! There was hay inside, so the fire can start spreading through the whole thing. Because the bonfire was so massive, it took several minutes to get the fire started. After that, it was crazy. Smoke blew into our faces where we couldn’t breathe, so we all (think thousands of people) started running away from the center. I felt like I was in a burning house, but it was a really exciting experience just because I knew I was safe. We all ducked really low, and tried to breathe, but most of us were coughing and suffocating. Then, as the fire started, the sight was amazing. Haha, I know I’ve said this before, but pictures just can’t describe it. Because the wind blew, it was like a 5 story high tornado of fire. And it was soooo pretty, despite the ash and smoke getting into my eyes/lungs. Someone told me that the fire usually takes a couple of hours to die down, but we weren’t there for that. For the picture below, look at the tiny heads on the bottom, they were very far away from the bonfire. So imagine that flame about 10 stories high, it was amazing :)
The last part of the night was spent watching fireworks. We were literally a few meters away from the place they fired everything up. Everything was directly above our heads. It was such an amazing sight. The fireworks looked like shooting stars ready to fall on me and it was one of the best displays I’ve seen just because it was literally right above my head. Summary: Guy Fawkes Day is crazy, amazing, and I love it!
Weekend
We wanted to eat this cool 5 pound buffet on Saturday (what is up with our obsession with Buffets?!), but when we got there, they kicked us out for a private party. It was so sad because I really wanted crepes, pizza, noodles, etc.! Instead, we went to eat the Days Chinese buffet again LOL. After that, we went to Azda to look for interesting and cool food. Susana bought so much unhealthy stuff that we’ve never seen before and I bought some fruit. I really want to try all the interesting chocolates/snacks they have so I know which ones are good and I can take back to give to people. There were so many cool brands from Belgium, Italy, Germany, etc, I couldn’t decide what to try first! We spent about 2 hours in the store. After we got back, we planned our Italy and Ireland trip. There are so many places to go and see, if only we had endless money amounts of money L
Sunday we went around the Pound and 99 stores for interesting eats again and then stopped by the grocery market. I then played badminton and made some REALLY AMAZING noodles for dinner, it was sort of like dandan mian, but not that spicy. Mmm…on a different note, I’m really going to miss these things about England:
Muller Yogurt
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Cider
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